• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2014.10a
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• pp.544-544
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• 2014

Energy harvesting technology, which scavenges electric power from ambient, otherwise wasted, energy sources, has been explored to develop self-powered wireless sensors and possibly eliminate the battery replacement cost for wireless sensors. Among ambient energy sources, vibration energy can be converted into electric power through a piezoelectric energy harvester. For the last decade, although tremendous advances have been made in design methodology to maximize harvestable electric power under a given vibration condition, the research in reliability assessment to ensure durability has been stagnant due to the complicated nature of the multiple failure modes of a piezoelectric energy harvester, such as the interfacial delamination, fatigue failure, and dynamic fracture. Therefore, this study presents the first-ever system reliability analysis for multiple failure modes of a piezoelectric energy harvester using the Generalized Complementary Intersection Method (GCIM), while accounts for the energy conversion performance. The GCIM enables to decompose the probabilities of high-order joint failure events into probabilities of complementary intersection events. The electromechanically-coupled analytical model is implemented based on the Kirchhoff plate theory to analyze its output performances of a piezoelectric energy harvester. Since a durable as well as efficient design of a piezoelectric energy harvester is significantly important in sustainably utilizing self-powered electronics, we believe that technical development on system reliability analysis will have an immediate and major impact on piezoelectric energy harvesting technology.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.29 no.12
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• pp.776-780
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• 2016

Recently, energy harvesting technology is increasing due to the fossil fuel shortages. To compensate problem of low generating power than other energy harvesters, many researchers have studied about piezoelectric harvester for obtaining high output. In this paper, four kinds of unimorph based piezoelectric harvesters were proposed and its generating characteristics were studied. Each of the piezoelectric harvesters has three, four, and six unimorph arms, respectively, and the arms are symmetrically arranged from one central point. The centrosymmetric structure of the harvesters guarantees more stable and multiplied generation than a cantilever-type harvester since the arms of the harvester resonate at same frequency. Resonance frequency, output voltage, displacement, and stress characteristics of the generator were analyzed by using a FEM (finite element method) program. Harvesters were fabricated on the basis of analysis results. Experimental results were compared with simulated results.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.90-98
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• 2021

Piezoelectric ceramic fiber composite (PCFC) was fabricated using a planar electrode printed piezoelectric ceramic fiber driven in transverse mode for small-scale wind energy harvester applications. The PCFC consisted of an epoxy matrix material and piezoelectric ceramic fibers sandwiched by interdigitated electrode (IDE) patterned polyimide films. The PCFC showed an excellent mechanical performance under a continuous stress. For the fabrication of PCB cantilever harvester, five -PCFCs were vertically attached onto a flexible printed circuit board (PCB) substrate, and then PCFCs were serially connected through a printed Cu circuit. The energy harvesting performance was evaluated applying an inverted structure, which imples its free leading edge located at an open end but the trailing edge at a clamped end, to enhance strain energy in a wind tunnel. The output voltage of the PCB cantilever harvester was increased as the wind speed increased. The maximum output power was 17.2 ㎼ at a resistance load of 200 ㏀ and wind speed of 9 m/s. It is considered that the PCB cantilever energy harvester reveals a potential use for wind energy harvester applications.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.416-425
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• 2021

In the 4^th industrial age, electronic devices are becoming smaller and lighter with a low power consumption to overcome spatial limitation. The piezoelectric energy harvesters can convert mechanical kinetic energy into electric energy; thus, enabling the operation of small electronic devices. Recently, various piezoelectric harvesters have been reported and the electric output from these harvesters could be anticipated by theoretical analysis methods. For example, COMSOL Multiphysics software provides a theoretical simulation of piezoelectric effect with a combination of mechanical and electrical phenomena in the piezoelectric materials. This article introduces a brief modeling of piezoelectric harvester to investigate mechanical stress and electrical output of harvesting devices by the COMSOL Multiphysics software.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.198-201
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• 2009

Due to piezoelectric property of regenerated cellulose paper, a green energy harvester using an electro-active paper (EAPap) was studied. In order to design the green energy harvester, we simulated cymbal type energy harvesting structures for single and multi-stacked layers of EAPap films. From the simulation, the optimized material orientation, thickness of harvesting structure was selected. By measuring of the induced output voltage by applying stress on energy harvester will be explained in detail. Therefore we propose the feasibility of the nature-friendly piezoelectric EAPap as a new green energy harvesting material.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.319-325
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• 2015

This paper presents an efficient vibration energy harvester with a piezoelectric (PE) cantilever. The proposed PE energy harvester increases the efficiency through minimization of hardware complexity and hence reduction of power dissipation of the circuit. Two key features of the proposed energy harvester are (i) incorporation synchronized switches with a simple control circuit, and (ii) a feed-forward buck converter with a simple control circuit. The chip was fabricated in $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS processing technology, and the measured results indicate that the proposed rectifier achieves the efficiency of 77%. The core area of the chip is 0.2 mm2.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.549-563
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• 2012

Theoretical analysis is performed on a multi-mode energy harvester design with focus on the first two vibration modes. Based on the analysis, a modification is proposed for designing a novel adaptive multi-mode energy harvester. The device comprises a simply supported beam with distributed mass and piezoelectric elements, and an adaptive damper that provides a 180 degree phase shift for the motions of two supports only at the second vibration mode. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations show that the new design can efficiently scavenge energy at the first two vibration modes. The energy harvesting capability of the multi-mode energy harvester is also compared with that of a cantilever-based energy harvester for single-mode vibration. The results show that the energy harvesting capacity is affected by the damping ratios of different designs. For fixed damping ratio and design dimensions, the multi-mode design has higher energy harvesting capacity than the cantilever-based design.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.623-640
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• 2015

This paper presents techniques to harvest higher voltage from piezoelectric cantilever energy harvester by structural alteration. Three different energy harvesting structures are considered namely, stepped cantilever beam, stepped cantilever beam with rectangular and trapezoidal cavity. The analytical model of three energy harvesting structures are developed using Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. The thickness, position of the rectangular cavity and the taper angle of the trapezoidal cavity is found to shift the neutral axis away from the surface of the piezoelectric element which in turn increases the generated voltage. The performance of the energy harvesters is evaluated experimentally and is compared with regular piezoelectric cantilever energy harvester. The analytical and experimental investigations reveal that, the proposed energy harvesting structures generate higher output voltage as compared to the regular piezoelectric cantilever energy harvesting structure. This work suggests that through simple structural modifications higher energy can be harvested from the widely reported piezoelectric cantilever energy harvester.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.274-278
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• 2016

A road energy harvester was designed and fabricated to convert mechanical energy from the vehicle load to electrical energy. The road energy harvester is composed of 20 piezoelectric materials. This study attempted to evaluate output depending on pavement materials when paving road piezoelectric energy harvester in the road. Harvester is the bender type and is the method of supporting the both ends of piezoelectric material and applying the load in the middle part. Harvester was paved in the type paved with asphalt, type paved with cement and in the exposed type not covering the top of harvester. The output characteristics were compared and evaluated depending on changes in vehicle load and vehicle speed changes. As vehicles, truck (11.9 ton), SUV(1.6 ton) and sedan (1.5 ton) were used and the output characteristics when driving at the interval of 10 km/h from 10 km/h to 100 km/h were evaluated.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.112-117
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• 2018

In this study, a bender-type piezoelectric energy harvester was fabricated and evaluated to compensate for the disadvantages of high-power generation only in the resonance frequency range of a piezoelectric harvester using a piezoelectric cantilever. The generated power was investigated according to various changes in the vibration environment. Compared with the piezoelectric cantilever module, the bender-type piezoelectric module showed a larger number of peak voltages. The primary peak voltage shifted toward the low frequency when the spring was coupled to the bender-type piezoelectric module. The harvester of the three bender-type modules had a vibration frequency exceeding 1 mW in the 34-45 Hz range and generated 3.112 mW of power at the vibration frequency of 38 Hz. The harvester of the six bender-type modules had a vibration frequency exceeding 1 mW in the 31-45 Hz range and generated 3.081 mW of power at the vibration frequency of 35 Hz.